Klosterneuburg Monastary

Klosterneuburg

Today we went on an excursion to Klosterneuburg, which is a monastery that is just outside of Vienna. It was a surprisingly amazing place, because I had seen quite a few really incredible churches, buildings, and people, but this was the next level.

Right off the bus the place is on top of the hill and obviously Baroque (more info to follow on all that). We meet up with Dom Ambrose who is a Canon at the monastery and get a little briefing on the church and the people that inhabit it. The monastery was built in 1114, so almost 900 years old, and it was founded by Saint Leopold III. (Side note: Saint Leopold III has a feast day which is on November 15, and Saint Augustine has one of August 28, and the canons here celebrate both of those dates because Leopold is responsible for the monastery and they are Augustinian Canons). Architecturally it is broken down into two main parts, with the older being a gothic style church and the latter is a more modern (150+ years old), also it is where the canons live.

Before learning from Ambrose, if you asked me what the difference between a monk and a canon was I wouldn’t be able to tell you, except maybe monks are people and canons are weapons. The basic difference is that canons try to be part of the greater community more than monks do. They still have similarities, but the ways and reasons they go about their lives is just different. Ambrose was a really cool guy from what I got from him, if I would meet him with regular clothes on, I would not think that he does what he does. It just reinforced the fact that you can’t peg someone in a stereotypical way just based on how they look or what they do. There are about 50 guys that live in the place and we had the chance to meet a few of them. The insight that we got into their lives was very interesting to me because I could never see myself doing something like that, yet it seems like they make the most of it. 

 After the tour we ended up at a wine garden with the canons and that proved to be an interesting experience because we had one student who got pretty emotional arguing about political parties and what they do for their people. Unfortunate it had to get to that point, but I think that is due to the nature of who we are talking to, because for us in the US, we are very open to everyone for the most part and we live pretty normal lives, there isn't too much that we have to defend or argue. However, for the canons, that is a different story, their lives are much more out there than ours, and our curiosity makes us question what they are doing so they must be vigilant in defending their beliefs, to the point where they don't really care what others are saying.